Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux

Denmark’s Minister of Digitalization, Caroline Stage, has announced that the Danish government will start moving away from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. Why? It’s not because open-source is better, although I would argue that it is, but because Denmark wants to claim “digital sovereignty.” In the States, you probably haven’t heard that phrase, but in the European Union, digital sovereignty is a big deal and getting bigger.

A combination of security, economic, political, and societal imperatives is driving the EU’s digital sovereignty moves. EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe’s dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future.

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Why? Because they’re concerned about who controls European data, who sets the rules, and who can potentially cut off access to essential services in times of geopolitical tension.  

For example, after the EU-based International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallan, for war crimes, President Donald Trump issued ICC sanctions. This order allegedly prompted Microsoft to lock the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, out of his email accounts, according to reports. 

This came after Microsoft chairman and general counsel, Brad Smith, had promised that the company would stand behind its EU customers against political pressure. Recently, however, Smith stated that Microsoft had not been “in any way [involved in] the cessation of services to the ICC,” according to Politico. When pressed, Microsoft failed to further explain how the email disconnection occurred. 

Whether or not Microsoft did cut services to an organization in response to Trump’s order, the fear that it could do so in the future remains. Before the Danish government announced its move, Denmark’s largest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, had already announced plans to phase out Microsoft software and cloud services. As Henrik Appel Espersen, chairman of the Copenhagen Audit Committee, who spearheaded this move, said, “If we suddenly can’t send emails or communicate internally because of a political fallout, that’s a huge problem.”

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In particular, the Danes are worried about Trump’s policies and that US political decisions could put public IT services at risk. After all, Greenland, which Trump has said many times he wants to unilaterally take over, is a Danish territory. 

Denmark’s Minister of Emergency Situations, Torsten Schack Pedersen, has warned Danish companies and agencies to reduce dependence on American-based cloud services. “We recommend that companies and authorities create exit plans for the use of, for example, cloud services, and that they also ensure that they have strong ownership of the data.” 

Denmark is not the only EU country with serious doubts about continuing to work with American tech giants. Bart Groothuis, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, recently said, the EU “should go for a European cloud” since “Europe has a ‘problem’ with American cloud.”

It’s not all about politics, though. Money issues have also played a decisive role. Copenhagen’s Microsoft software bill has soared from 313 million kroner in 2018 to 538 million kroner — about $53 million in 2023, a 72% increase in just five years. 

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All that said, no one expects this to be an easy transition. Making the jump from Azure, Office, and Windows to a third-party EU-based cloud system such as NextCloud, LibreOffice, and Linux will take time and effort. 

Nor is everyone a believer in moving to open-source software. Mette Harbo, IT director in the Capital Region of Denmark, thinks it’s impossible for Denmark to move off Microsoft software or achieve digital sovereignty. 

Still, as David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), a Dane, inventor of Ruby on Rails, and co-owner of the software developer company 37Signals, has said, “Denmark is one of the most highly digitalized countries in the world. It’s also one of the most Microsoft-dependent. In fact, Microsoft is by far and away the single biggest dependency, so it makes perfect sense to start the quest for digital sovereignty there.” 

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